China sanctions Pompeo and other Trump administration officials

China has sanctioned 28 US individuals, including outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for seriously violating the country’s sovereignty, according to a statement from the Chinese foreign ministry late Wednesday.

Among the others who were sanctioned are Peter Navarro, Robert O’Brien, David Stilwell, Matthew Pottinger, Alex Azar II, Keith Krach, and Kelly Craft of the Trump administration, as well as John Bolton and Stephen Bannon.

These individuals and their immediate family members are prohibited from entering the mainland, Hong Kong and Macau of China. They, and companies and institutions associated with them, are also restricted from doing business with China.

“Over the past few years, some anti-China politicians in the United States ... have planned, promoted and executed a series of crazy moves which have gravely interfered in China’s internal affairs, undermined China’s interests, offended the Chinese people, and seriously disrupted China-US relations,” the ministry said.

Earlier in the day, China dismissed Washington’s allegation that Beijing was committing “genocide” against Uygurs and other minorities as “outrageous lies.”

Pompeo, who had unleashed a barrage of measures against China in his final weeks in office, announced that the Trump administration had determined that China has committed “genocide and crimes against humanity” in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

“Pompeo has made so many lies in recent years, and this is just another outrageous lie,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.

“This so-called determination by Pompeo is nothing but wastepaper. This US politician, notorious for lying and cheating, is making himself a laughing stock and a clown,” she said.

The allegations of abuses are “outright sensational pseudo-propositions and a malicious farce concocted by individual anti-China and anti-Communist forces represented by Pompeo,” Hua said, adding genocide “had never happened in the past, is not happening now and will never happen in China.”